Pipeline protest rally set for today

GREENFIELD — A rally against the planned natural gas pipeline will go on this afternoon, organizers say, despite postponement of a regional informational meeting that was originally scheduled to follow.

The 5 p.m. gathering on the Greenfield Town Common is being organized by a consortium of groups opposed to Kinder Morgan’s plans for a 179-mile pipeline that would cross nine Franklin County towns on its way from Wright, N.Y., to Dracut, north of Lowell.

The rally will include music and updates on the movement to stop the planned Tennessee Gas Pipeline Northeast Expansion project. Organizers, which include No Fracked Gas in Mass. and Hilltown Community Rights, have invited state legislators to attend the event, which had originally been scheduled to coincide with a meeting that had been scheduled by the Franklin Regional Council of Governments and its Regional Planning Board at the John W. Olver Transit Center. That meeting, postponed because of potential violation of the state’s Open Meeting Law, is being rescheduled at a larger location.

Some of the survey methods that Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co. wants to do along its 179-mile planned Northeast Corridor would violate conservation restriction covenants, Mount Grace Land Conservation Trust has written to the company. In a letter calling on Tennessee Gas to “cease seeking permission from landowners to conduct activities on already conserved lands that would constitute violations of any …
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As hundreds of area residents sweltered Wednesday night in the Greenfield Middle School auditorium, many of them railing against Tennessee Gas Pipeline’s proposed Northeast Energy Direct project, company …
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